"I'm not…trying to teach people how to parent," she says.

Amy Chua, the controversial author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, appeared on The Colbert Report Tuesday to defend herself.

Chua says "it's a little surprising" she's come under fire for writing about restricting her daughters from play dates and forcing them to practice the piano and violin for hours on end (once not letting her daughter use the bathroom until after she'd mastered a song) and do math drills.

"The book is a memoir. It's supposed to be funny. It's a self parody," explains Chua. "It's about how I tried to raise my two daughters in the same my strict Chinese immigrant way my parents raised me. It is about some of the strengths… also about my mistakes and making fun of myself and how I ultimately had to pull back from that kind of [parenting]."

What is the biggest misconception about the book?

"That I'm trying to teach people how to parent, which I'm not," she says. "It's not a how-to book."